PERSPECTIVE

Visual Analytics - Point of View

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In the business intelligence (BI) space,

there is a paradigm shift in the market,

as BI evolves from static reporting and

dashboards, to churning contextual

insights and providing cognitive

intelligence. Now, users would like to

discover patterns and insights from within

the vast amounts of data the organization

has gathered over the years. They also need

quicker answers to make smarter decisions

– at the speed of thought. This evolution is

catalyzed by two key phenomena. The first

is the advent of next-gen technologies that

have provided a host of new capabilities

and have created a new age user wish list

that includes abilities to search, discover,

and collaborate. The second is the sudden

spurt in data pouring in from different

directions and growing rapidly. This, in

turn, has created new possibilities of

gaining deeper insights into customers,

organizational processes, market dynamics,

and monetizing information assets.

The enabling of analytics and insights-

driven enterprises has created new

opportunities to drive superior business

Visual analytics – point of view

performance by empowering users with

rapid and actionable insights.

Today, organizations face three major

challenges while taking an enterprise-view

of BI applications. Firstly, not all the users

are data analysts; so the organizations

need to provide users with ways to

consume data in an impactful and intuitive

manner, instead of just stand-alone

insights. This empowers even an average,

not-so-tool-savvy user to make informed

decisions.

Secondly, users have diverse needs and

no single tool can cater to all of them with

purely out-of-the-box functionalities.

The third challenge is with enterprise

adoption of BI self-service models. A

complete adoption, throughout the

enterprise, can empower end users to

reduce dependencies on IT and make the

organization more agile.

At Infosys, we consider visual analytics

to be a key enabler for this change. The

power of visual analytics can be leveraged

in weaving the story together – from data

discovery and point analytics to creation

of an actionable storyboard – along with

effectively diagnosing as well as solving

business problems for the users. Hence, it

enables enterprises to become insights-

driven by broadening the scope and reach

of BI to enterprise-wide users through:

• Enhanced enterprise adoption:

Infosys believes that ensuring

enterprise-wide adoption of BI tools

is key to making enterprises ‘insights-

driven’. Visual analytics heavily

propagates and facilitates self-service,

empowering users to make their

decisions with minimal dependencies

on IT or power-users. As a result, it

takes BI usage to all the levels of an

organization, even to the frontline

users, thus expediting enterprise-wide

adoption.

• Intuitive intelligence: Another key

element in evangelizing the benefits

of BI across the organization is to

make its usage intuitive, so that the

users can gain insights as well as

actionable information to perform

their jobs effectively and efficiently.

Visual analytics goes beyond just slick

graphs and leverages interactive and

advanced visualization techniques to

provide actionable insights through

visually intuitive and interrelated data

representations.

• Enriched end user experience:

Another aspect in improving BI

effectiveness is to make insights

available anytime / anywhere and

improve the time to insights, so that

the users have enough time to take

actions based on them. Visual analytics

focuses on optimizing the number

of clicks, optimizing the reports and

dashboards space, and providing

thematic interactions to reduce the

time to insights.

Machinelearning Visual analytics

landscape

Datamanagement

AdvancedVisualizations

Statisticalanalysis

Operationalreporting

Storytelling

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While enterprise BI tools are constrained

in their data representation capabilities,

specialized tools in the visual analytics

space, lack enterprise scale. The Infosys

visual analytics offering bridges this gap

effectively, maximizing ROI from clients’

existing BI investments:

a. Enriching and scaling the current

investments – Through pre-built

advanced, open source visualization

plugins, enterprise BI tools can be

scaled and enriched to meet the

current ROI requirements. With

mobility applications and governance

frameworks added to support the

coexistence of next-gen visualization

tools with enterprise BI platforms, we

can double the returns. Not only do we

reap the benefits of both worlds, but

also help in evangelizing the benefits

of BI across the enterprise.

b. Enabling BI adoption across the

enterprise – Through pre-built assets,

such as iGuide (a glossary to enable

users to understand the content) and

the UX Playbook (best practices for

visualizations-driven analysis) that are

based on industry best practices and

vast engagement experience.

Infosys has partnered with its clients and

enabled them to reap the benefits of BI

at all levels, by applying visual analytics

components in different situations.

A networking products major had a big

repository of non-standardized reports –

visualizations. Infosys contextualized its

pre-defined UX Playbook for enterprise

and mobility users to deliver organizational

standards for data representation and

visualization. The standards became a

reference point, and the approach is now

used across various initiatives to make BI

more inclusive, including analysis, data

plays, and tool interactions.

The senior executives at a US-based

fashion specialty retailer were unable

to access performance reports on the

move and had to rely on manually created

ad-hoc reports or hardcopies. The existing

tools lacked the ability to drill down into

organization or merchant hierarchies. The

Infosys team engaged with the client to

enable mobility for the users along with

the ability to drill down to the details,

without impacting the visual settings of

the report. This provided the executives

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the capability to not just access but also

analyze the information on-the-go.

Infosys partnered with a leading

legal information publisher in a major

transformational program, where user

adoption was a key success factor. Infosys

offered an innovative solution, whereby

the team prepared knowledge capsules

and compiled ‘tool tips and tricks’ that

were further compiled into user guides

and were made available on the enterprise

portal for ready reference. This ensured a

smooth transition to the new tool and high

levels of user adoption.

About the Authors

Yogesh Veerkumar Parulekar Principal Architect, DNA, Infosys

Yogesh is an experienced BI Practitioner with an overall IT experience of 21 years which

includes over 14 years in Business Intelligence. Currently he is working as a Principal Architect

in Infosys heading Solutions within the Business Intelligence space.

Mitul Kumar Principal Consultant, DNA, Infosys

Mitul is a Principal Consultant at Data and Analytics practice with over 11 years of experience.

He has let multiple consulting and transformation engagements and is currently responsible for

conceptualizing, incubating and evangelizing new offerings that aim to augmenting client value.